The Heart of Fellowship

Exeter Temple Message notes:

Sunday 24^th August 2014

Bible Reading 1 John 3:16-24
 “We are forbidden to neglect assembling together. Christianity is already institutional in the earliest of documents. The Church is the bride of Christ. We are members of one another.” 
(CS Lewis)
God doesn’t just call us to believe; he calls us to belong.  Whether that sounds like a good thing may depend upon what your experiences of belonging to a group of believers has been like. The New Testament does not give us the option of having a Christian faith without also embracing the concept of community. 
What is at the heart of true fellowship?
 “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.”  (v16)
Just as love is at the heart of mission so love is at the heart of fellowship It is love is that can only be understood or experienced among us through sacrifice.
The thing that created the barrier between God and the human race was the desire of human beings to place their ego in front of their relationship with God. Pride and selfishness stand in the hearts of all people, like an immovable wall separating them from the God who loves them and from one another. The love of God flows towards every human being but it hits the wall of their ego, their pride and their selfishness. 

The only person of whom this is not true is Jesus. In him there is no wall- no ego, no pride, no self-centredness and he proved it by putting aside his own life so that like a mighty river overflowing it’s banks, the love of God sweeps into the lives of sinners who come to the cross. The challenge is then for us

“In the midst of a world drenched with enmity, the Church is that society of persons who take their stand where enmity was robbed of its power, they stand at the cross and serve one another in love through the power of the Spirit.”  (Commissioner Phil Needham)

Often “laying down your life” is seen as meaning death but the Greek word “tith-ay-mee” can also be translated as “commit, give, kneel down, ordain, purpose, or set forth”
There are some things that we need to lay down for one another if we are going to have fellowship.

 1. Lay down a tick box mentality

n the 4^th century when Emperor Constantine made Christianity a legitimate the church ceased to be an underground movement. It was now free to create buildings which became the centre of worship and the whole dynamic of church changed.  The concept of going to church, rather than being the church entered into the consciousness.  It led to a large scale attitude in society that Christian duty could be fulfilled by regular attendance at a worship service and participation in particular ceremonies, such as baptism, communion and paying your tithe.  They were ticking the duty box. At the same time the ministry of the church, rather than something all Christians engaged in, was something that was done by specialist professionals.   It was therefore possible for people to see attending church in the same way they support the local football team. They tick the supporter box.

Another trend of recent years is the consumer Christian who treats going to church in the same way as they treat going to the supermarket.  For them it is not about how their attendance ticks a box for God but about how an expression of church ticks all the boxes on their list.  They will go to the place that ticks all the boxes in terms of enjoyable worship experience, convenience, comfort, emotional therapy and cultural relevance.     

If we truly want to get to the heart of what true fellowship is about we have to lay down the tick box mentality and enter into messy, inconvenient, time consuming, demanding relationships with people.  In Christ we are a community of faith, a special place where we can minister and be ministered to. We need each other. Therefore, the community of faith needs to be a priority in our lives.

 “The experience of authentic community is one of the purposes God intends to be fulfilled by the church. The writings of Scripture lead one to conclude that God intends the church, not to be one more bolt on the wheel of activity in our lives, but the very hub at the centre of one’s life. (Randy Frazee)

Acts 2:42 says that the early believers “devoted themselves to fellowship.

2.  Lay down my personal ambition

Having seen who Jesus really was John the Baptist stood aside to let Jesus take centre stage. The least that John could have expected was to have been chosen to be Christ’s right hand man.  Instead Jesus chose Peter, who had been John’s disciple first. Sometimes it is tough to make way for Jesus but human beings can find it is even harder to make way for one another and accept that Jesus has other ideas about what he wants to do, who he wants to use and how he wants to use us in his plans.

For example, Ananias had to deal with Saul, Peter with Cornelius and Philemon with Onesimus.

 “What causes fights and quarrels among you?  Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? (James 4: 1)    

You want something and you don’t get it. The solution to overcoming this is “Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up.” (James 4:10)

 3. Lay down rocks

“If we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7)

John says that it is in the light that we have fellowship with one another but the reality is that most of us don’t operate that way when we try to have fellowship with one another. 

We operate from the idea that I need to keep my sin hidden otherwise people will know what I am

really like and we will suffer their rejection.  But God’s word says the opposite.  It is actually when we are real with one another that we can have true fellowship.

This involves risk because sometimes when we have attempted to be honest about our struggles and our sin, people have thrown rocks at us.

Why would they do that?  It is because throwing rocks keeps people at a distance and at a distance you can’t see the flaws, the sin; the failure.  

When that happens to us we respond by retreating to the darkness and throwing rocks back.  As in the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11) it is a wonderful thing when the grace of Jesus steps in and stops us stoning one another.  The cross is the place where we all stand on level ground and the place where we can lay down the rocks of criticism, condemnation, self-righteous judgement, back-biting and gossip and our hands are free to offer one another the ministry of forgiveness, understanding, healing, accountability and practical help.   

 “We are not minimizing sin when we maximize Christ’s mercy. We are not white washing sin; we are blood washing it. The world sees a church with rocks in its hands looking for adulterers and sinners. We have become the “Church of the angry Christians.” In the drama that is unfolding in the world today we have not been playing the role of Christ but rather the part of the Pharisees.  Let us drop the rocks from our hands, and then lift up our hands, without wrath in prayer to God.”  (Francis Frangipani)

"We ought to lay down our lives. John writes not intending to give a grand challenge for heroic Christians but an everyday commandment for ordinary Christians. The Christian life is a life laid down for others, a life built on self-sacrifice.” (Ronald Cole-Turner)

Every time we respond in love to someone else, we are laying down our lives for them. For Christians this isn't something exceptional, but something quite ordinary.

God bless

Carol